Erin Sprague '05 Making a Difference No Matter Where She Runs

Erin Sprague is the youngest person ever to run a marathon on
all seven continents. That’s right, all seven
continents. A member of the class of 2005, a history
concentrator, and a former resident of Quincy House, Sprague, who
ran cross country for the Crimson, started running marathons when
she graduated.

It all began as
something casual. “I love to run and it’s a good way to
keep running and keep competing, so I ran a couple in the United
States,” she says, “Somehow, during my travels, I came
across the idea of potentially running a marathon on all seven
continent.

“As I
started to research it, I began to realize that I could be the
youngest person to ever do it. It evolved very
organically. It all started with the idea that it was
possible, and it could work, so I started to check the schedule of
marathons.”

That schedule
brought her to her first international race in October 2006, where
she ran the Olympic course in Beijing. At this point, the record
was still purely athletic endeavor, that is, until Sprague started
spreading the word about what she was doing.

“People
eventually understood what I was doing, and the question I always
got was: Why? So I thought it would be really great to do
this for something that was a little bit larger” recalls
Sprague.

It was at this
point that she teamed up with international development profession
Dana Worth, and together they set up the non-profit organization
“In the Running.” Sprague describes the charity
as a “mini-foundation,” which donates to a grassroots
non-profit in each of the seven continents that she runs.

“We did a
lot of research on different types of causes we might want to
donate to and also different types of organization. Basically, I
called everyone that I had ever known, people I hadn’t talked
to since my senior year who I’d heard were in Africa, working
with charitable healthcare organizations to try and get
recommendations on good grassroots non-profits.”

Sprague was also
adamant that she chose the organizations based on their specific
relevance to problems within their continent. However, that
wasn’t the only criterion for choosing an organization.

“Once we
had an idea of the cause we wanted to support within each
respective continent that narrowed down the list. I called
the executive officers of each of the organizations and put them
through the wringer with an interview and all sorts of questions,
trying to get an understanding of where the donations would be
used. It’s great to donate at the grassroots level
because your donation can hopefully have a lot more direct impact,
but one of the risks is that you don’t have the layers of
accountability that you have with a bigger organization,” she
remarks.

After an intense
process, Sprague chose to support:

Girls on the Run
(North America)

A Drop in the
Ocean, which is a student-based group at Harvard (South America)

“What we
wanted to do was not just raise money for these organizations, but
also to raise awareness. These organizations have great
operations on the ground, but they’re in places like Kenya
where people have never really heard of them, especially coming
from the United States. We wanted to help these organizations
out and put them on the map.”

As her
philanthropic team was assembled, about 11 people staffed mainly
with Harvard graduates from the classes of ’04 and ’05,
their network expanded and they were even more able to facilitate
their project.

“We looked
at what we could provide and we saw that we could provide resources
– get interviews, get press articles for these organizations,
raise funds in cities like New York and Boston and get them to
people on the ground who know a little bit more what to do.”

It seems as if
Sprague has also had a lot of success with this goal of
awareness. For example, Co-operation Ireland hopes to expand
and implement their peaceful reconciliation program in the Middle
East, and, as Sprague mentions, “By giving them our story, it
gave them something that they could use for further
outreach.”

Her favorite
response, however, came from the “Silver Lining
Foundation” in Australia. “We were these Americans who
came from really far away to donate to this little charity in the
middle of the Australian outback. On their webpage they
feature all of these really famous people in Australia, and then
they feature us. We tried to tell them, we’re just a
small group from the United States! We’re not famous at
all!”

Of course, this
was no walk in the park. Despite having to look after the
philanthropic side of things, Sprague also had to consider her
training. All of this, of course, in addition to a full-time
job at the Blackstone Group in New York.

“It’s
not easy at all,” she continued. “It involved a
lot of early morning wake-ups. One of my biggest problems was
running a race in Antarctica. Training for that was probably
the most intense thing I’ve ever done. I’m from
upstate New York, up around the mountains, so the December and
January before the race, I would take the train home almost every
weekend to run in as much snow as I could.”

Of course,
the snow in Antarctica wouldn’t be plowed, so Sprague had no
choice but to run alongside ski trails in the massive drifts.

Sprague was no
stranger to people’s shock by the end of her journey.
Every time she told anyone about the project, she says that
“people sort of did a double take or they said, ‘Oh, so
you’ll run on six continents.’ People
couldn’t believe that a marathon on Antarctica exists.
You see the wheels turning in people’s minds as they figure
out how you could run in that ice and snow.”

But Sprague
attributes the success of her fundraising, which totaled nearly
$100,000, to the uniqueness of her mission. Of course, it helped
her do something amazing too.

“I was
never fast enough to set a running record for speed, so I knew
I’d have to get creative about it and find a way to outwit
the competition!”

However the
Guiness world record and “In the Running,” came to be
is only the beginning of a much larger story. Sprague hopes
to continue to expand her charity with “a new generation,
having a new athletic goal, and trying to build more of a team
around it.” Now that the brand is off the ground,
Sprague and her team are focused on getting more people involved
and continuing the mission of publicizing and supporting her seven
very special non-profits.

Whatever the case
may be, the fact still stands: On July 6, 2008, Erin Sprague did
something incredible. She became the youngest woman to run a
marathon AND make a difference in all seven continents of the
world.